Developing Neopan 400 using HC-110 and Ilford Rapid Fix

1. Get chemicals ready
   • Initial Rinse: 500ml dH20 in Beaker
   • Developer: HC-110 Dilution B (One shot developer)
     • To make 500ml mix 16ml concentration + 484ml dH20
     • To make Dilution H : 8ml + 492ml dH20
   • Stop Bath: 1L dH20 in beaker
   • Fixer: Ilford Rapid Fix (Reuse?)
     • Mix 1:4 in black 500ml bottle (100ml Rapid Mixer concentrate + 400ml dH20)
   • Wash: 1.5L dH20
2. Put film on Reel
3. Initial rinse with dH20 – 5 minutes with some inverting at the beginning and some stamping to remove any air bubbles – after 5 minutes dump out water
4. Developer
   • Fill quickly
   • Develop for 9min. 15sec in Dilution H in 22°C water
   • Agitation: First 30 seconds and then the first 15 seconds of every minute starting at 1:00 – 1:15, then 2:00-2:15, and so forth.
5. Dump developer down the drain
6. Stop bath with dH20 at roughly the same temp as the developer. Pour stop bath in, invert for 30 seconds. Pour it out. Pour in another 500ml, agitate for 30 seconds, then pour out.
7. Fixer – 7 minutes?
   • Pour in quickly
   • Agitate for 30 seconds and stamp it a couple times to remove air bubbles
   • Agitate as you would with developer every minute
   • After 7 minutes pour back into bottle. After 4-5 uses, dump or save in a larger gallon milk jug labeled “exhausted fixer”
8. Wash
   • Fill with tap water invert 5 times and dump
   • Fill with tap water invert 10 times and dump
   • Fill with tap water invert 20 times and dump
   • Fill with Tap water plus 1ml Photoflo and invert

Hope this helps someone out there trying their own hand at developing their own film.

Here two photographers that, IMO, have an incredible photographic vision or style (is it a coincidence they both shoot mostly film?):

Zeb Andrews: This guy takes great shots using all (or mostly?) film cameras. Beyond his amazing photos, I think he also has a great philosophy on photography in general.

Wallace Billingham: Incredible long exposure Holga nature photography mostly taken in northwestern PA close to my hometown.

I used to write in this space about my thoughts. Then I realized that, well, sometimes those things might not be appropriate for the entire world to know. In fact I wasn’t sure I even wanted to admit them to myself let along millions of random people who might search for an odd collection of words on google. Throughout this whole process though, I think what I was looking for can simple be summed up in one word:

Hope

And you know what? There are alot of people out there, besides me, who are looking for hope too. We work and toil hoping that what we do isn’t in vain. We listen, learn, and try not to repeat the mistakes of our parents but usually this is a lesson in humility and love. We hope we are doing right by our kids even though we have no clue what we are doing. We hope we can make a difference somewhere to someone. I’ve started to ask myself each day, have I at least tried to bring hope to someone? Is my life bringing hope to anyone or am I merely trying to survive?

Finally, what can I do to bring hope to someone who desperately needs it? If I answer these questions honestly, it necessitates a radical paradigm shift, a radical change in thinking in my everyday life. It necessitates a simpler life focused on others rather than myself.

Small things can and do make a difference.

The Canon EF was made from 1973-1976 and this particular EF was purchased in Japan when my dad was stationed there in the Air Force. It’s a great camera. But there’s so much I realize now that I just don’t know about it and using an SLR to take pictures.

I’m sure if you’re interested in the EF you can find some more information about it elsewhere on the internet, but I’ll give you my impressions.

First, it’s heavy. I mean everything in this thing is mechanical, so you are hauling around this camera with all these mechanical parts made of metal. There isn’t much plastic here. I actually like this. It feels more substantial than alot of the lightweight dSLRs I’ve handled and therefore I just think it feels better in my hands. I love the fact that I have to manually wind the film. This seems like an annoyance at first, but part of me just loves the noises it produces. The sturdy click of the shutter moving when you depress the shutter release button, the film winder, it all makes for a great experience.

I also didn’t realize there are such differences in film. Obviously there’s the speed differences, but even from one company to the next, people love or hate these different films. I can’t really throw my hat into this ring yet since I haven’t shot enough to really say one way or the other on anything.

Enough words. For a couple pics from the EF using Kodak 400TX film, check out my photoblog. I’ve also put some pics in this post just to check them out in this format.

Let me know what you think – good or bad.

It will be interesting to see if the flavors become even more pronounced as the beer continues to age in the bottle. I’ll just have to wait and find out.

I’ve been concerned the entire time now that the beer will be overly spiced since I think that it’s probably pretty easy to add too much of these spices when making a beer like this. However, when I was racking the beer to the secondary and then racking again for bottling, I never smelled any “spice” smells, so I actually started thinking I hadn’t put enough nutmeg, cinnamon, etc. into the beer. After all, five minutes isn’t much time for the beer to absorb the flavor of these spices. However, after I was done bottling, I smelled the small amount of wort left in the bottom of the bucket (don’t worry – it was well less than one beer) and it smelled exactly like pumpkin pie. Hopefully this means that the spices will be present in the final product but not overpowering – exactly what I was shooting for.

Hopefully in another week or so the beer will be well carbonated and I’ll be able to have a taste and give a final verdict.

Ingredients:

3lb pumpkin
0.5 lbs two-row pale malt
0.5 lbs malted wheat
0.5 lbs medium crystal malt
5 lbs unhopped amber malt extract (I used 4 lbs unhopped amber dry malt)
1 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup unsulphered molasses
1 oz. Fuggles hop pellets (4% Alpha) for 57 minutes
0.5 oz. (total) of pie spices (see below)
Ale Yeast (White labs american ale yeast)
1 cup corn sugar for bottling

Started out by taking the pumpkin and cutting it in half. Cleaned out the seeds (and baked them in the oven along with a little oil and some cajun spices – this alone almost made this beer worth making)

Once the pumpkin had cooked for about an hour (until it was a little mushy like squash) at 300 degrees, I cut the pumpkin into large chunks (with the skin still on) and added this to five quarts of water along with the crushed two-row, crystal malt, and malted wheat. The grain and pumpkin were mashed for in the water heated to ~152 degrees for 55 minutes. The temperature was then raised to 165 degrees for 5 minutes. We then drained off the liquid and sparged the grain with 5 quarts of 170 degree water.

To the boil pot we then added the malt extract, brown sugar, and molasses. After the mixture was boiling we added the Fuggles hops. The original BYO recipe called for Mt. Hood hops, but the LHB store didn’t carry this, so we substituted Fuggles instead. We’ll see how this turns out. We then boiled everything for 55 minutes. The pie spices were then added for the last 5 minutes of the boil. 

Pumpkin Pie Spices: A mixture of nutmeg, cinnamon, all spice, cardamon and clove. The original BYO recipe called for ginger as well, but I omitted that ingredient. I mixed the spices together in a small cheesecloth sack. I used a total of 4 whole nutmegs that I cut in 1/4 pieces, 6 or 7 cinnamon sticks which I broke in half, a couple whole all spice kernels, and some whole cloves. I couldn’t tell whether or not the recipe on BYO used whole spices or powdered spices, but I was really worried about this beer being too spicy, so I ended up just using whole spices for only the last 5 minutes of the boil. This might not have been enough, but I’d rather the beer not be spiced enough, than be completely undrinkable over spiced.  

After the boil, I cooled the wort down to about 75 degrees and added the cooled wort to my glass carboy along with enough water to bring the total volume to 4.5 gallons and aerated the crap out of the wort. Then I pitched the yeast and it’s been fermenting for a week now in my kitchen. I think today I’ll transfer the fermented wort to a secondary carboy for another week, then bottle up the beer and let it sit for a month or so. 

O.G. = 1.052. 

Happy Brewing!

Benched from Brandon McCormick on Vimeo.

I recently posted this one from a cemetery on a hillside above Monterosso al Mar. Hopefully I’ll have more time in the near future to put up some pictures from the beautiful Cinque Terra region in Italy we visited last month.